To-night, when he presently fell asleep, somewhat more comfortable

in body, and soothed in spirit by the promise of a visit from the

doctor, Rachael went into her own room and sinking into a deep

chair sat staring stupidly at the floor. She did not think of the

husband she had just left, nor of the formal dinner party being

given, only half a mile away, to a great English novelist--a

dinner to which the Breckenridges had of course been asked and

upon which Rachael had weeks ago set her heart. She was tired, and

her thoughts floated lazily about nothing at all, or into some

opaque region of their own knowing, where the ills of the body

might not follow.

Presently Miss Vanderwall, clothed in a trailing robe of soft

Arabian cotton, came briskly out of the bathroom, her short dark

hair hanging in a mane about her rosy face.

"Why so pensive, Rachael?" she asked cheerfully, pressing a button

that lighted the circle of globes about the dressing-table mirror,

and seating herself before it. But under her loose locks she sent

a keen and concerned look at her hostess' thoughtful face.

"Tired," Rachael answered briefly, not changing her attitude, but

with a fleeting shadow of a smile.

"How's Clancy?"

"Asleep. He's wretched, poor fellow! Berry Stokes' bachelor

dinner, you know. That crowd is bad for him."

"I KNEW it must have been an orgy!" Miss Vanderwall declared

vivaciously. "That was a silly slip of mine in the car. Billy

doesn't know he went, I suppose?"

"No, he promised her he wouldn't. But everyone was at the dinner.

Some of them came home early, I believe. But it was all kept

quiet, because Aline Pearsall is such a little shrinking violet, I

suppose," Mrs. Breckenridge said. "The Pearsalls are to think it

was just an impromptu affair. Billy and Aline of course have no

idea what a party it was. But Clarence says that poor Berry was

worse than he, and a few of them are still keeping it up. It's a

shame, of course--"

Her uninterested voice dropped into silence.

"Men are queer," Miss Vanderwall said profoundly, busy with ivory-

backed brushes, powders, and pastes.

"The mystery to me--about men," mused Mrs. Breckenridge, her

absent eyes upon the buckled slipper she held in her hand, "is not

that they are as helpless as babies the moment anything goes wrong

with their poor little heads or their poor little tummies, but

that they work so hard, in spite of that, to increase the general

discomfort of living. Women have a great deal of misery to bear,

they are brave or cowardly about it as the case may be, but at

least they endure and renounce and diet and keep early hours--or

whatever's to be done--they TRY to lessen the sum of physical

misery. But men go cheerily on--they smoke too much, and eat too

much, and drink too much, and they bring the resulting misery

sweetly and confidently to some woman to bear for them. It's

hopeless!"




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